Performance Evaluation of Catalysts Using Various Carbon Supports for Lithium-Air Battery

초록

Lithium air battery will be one of the most reliable energy storage systems in electrical applications such as electrical vehicles and devices due to its high specific energy density compared with lithium ion battery. However, performance degradation of the catalyst due to the cover of reaction site by the solid discharge products is serious obstacles to its commercial use. In this work, carbon materials with high surface area and porosity were utilized to solve this problem. Carbon supports with various nanostructures can not only accommodate solid product but also assist the oxygen diffusion. Manganese oxides and ruthenium oxides with various carbon supports were synthesized by hydrothermal method and reflux method for cathode electrode catalyst. After that, resultant was coated onto gas diffusion layer (GDL) by thermal spray coating method. Charge-discharge behavior was investigated using a Swagelok-type cell. The physiochemical properties were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis (BET).